From the International Man Booker Prize-winning author of Can't and Won't and The End of the Story - a crystalline collection of literary essays for fans of Susan Sontag and Joan Didion

'Among my most favourite writers. Read her now!' A. M. Homes

The visionary, fearless Lydia Davis presents a dazzling collection of essays on reading and writing, exploring the full scope of possibility within existing forms of literature and considering how we might challenge and reinvent these forms.

Through Thomas Pynchon, Michel Leiris, Maurice Blanchot, Lucia Berlin, Joan Mitchell and others, he author considers her many creative influences. And, through these lenses, she returns to her own writing process, her relationship to language and the written word. Beautifully formed, thought-provoking, playful and illuminating, these pieces are a masterclass in reading and writing.

a cornucopia of illuminating and timeless observations on literature, art, and the craft of writing. * Publisher's Weekly *
The unclassifiable writer and translator's collected nonfiction shows us a brilliant mind at work. * The New Republic *
the beloved American author reflects on reading and writing in typically funny, incisive and tender style. * Stylist *
Davis does for the essay what one of her subjects-Rimbaud-did for the prose poem: fires language with emotive, radiant wisdom. * Library Journal *
masterful, lucid collection . . . no single piece could capture the essence of this extraordinary writer . . . Read these essays: see everything around you in a clear, fresh light * New Statesman *

Lydia Davis is the author of Collected Stories, one novel and six short story collections, the most recent of which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013.